Caring to the bitter end

I just realized something that seems obvious in retrospect.

I already knew that I was more tenacious in arguments than many. I also knew that I more interested in using argument and inquiry to undercover truth. Of course, I also knew that most commenters on the internet have neither the vigor nor the fairness to follow through on the paths their arguments take. Yet knowing all this, for the first time I attacked another commenter for pivoting away from an argument, and called him to come back to it. This is what I wrote (minus the fake expletives):

Why won't you stay on the topic, thrash it out completely, and find out if you're right or wrong. It's so maddening to argue with some people. If you really care about the issue, stay to the end and really go into the argument, don't bail out.

This is what I really think. If you care about an issue, you go as deep as you can. You keep arguing, and keep listening to all the counterarguments, until you figure out what is strong and what is weak, what is right and what is wrong. The real answers are worth doing this for. If you don't want to go this far, and don't want to make the commitment to following where the arguments lead, you shouldn't be arguing at all.

If, on the other hand, you really care, then you do follow the argument to the end. And sometimes the end is painful. I find I've been wrong for years, or that the world can't be the way I wish it could be.

I know that some of this sounds like self-congratulations, but I think it's more than that. It's a commitment to rigorous thinking, rigorous inquiry, honesty, and acceptance of the truth that's discovered. That's a big commitment, but I mean every bit of it.

Image:edmontonsun.com

Blaming the talkers, not the shooters

Is Harry Reid right when he blames the murders and shooting at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood on Republican politicians?

There are some good arguments for leveling some of the blame on them. Many of them aren't moderate in their statements, but instead ramp up the anger at those who support and provide abortions to the women who want them. They don't take the extra few seconds to remind people to try to stop abortion only through rational, respectful discussion. The GOPers as a whole have quite a history of lying about abortion, like 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion. Shouldn't the GOP be held responsible when lies like this influence someone to kill? When I put it like this, yes, it seems they should be partially blamed.

But then I tried a thought experiment--do I feel the same about protest movements that I have more sympathy for? How much do I blame the Black Lives Matter movement for execution-type shootings of police? The answer to that one is easy--I don't blame Black Lives Matter, or the vast majority of their advocates and supporters. A few protesters have encouraged the shooting of police, but very few. And even then, they weren't directly involved in shootings, so they aren't guilty of incitement or conspiracy. I'm not even sure there is a crime for what they did, if all they did is yell.

So, am I going to have a different standard for conservatives and their causes than for liberals and their causes? It might be tempting, but I'm not. People are morally responsible to the lies they tell, or for the hate speech they mutter or shout, but they're not responsible when someone else pulls the trigger--unless they cross the gray line between advocating a position and advocating specific violence.

Am I right about this position? I'm not totally sure. However, I don't want to choose what is expedient, but what is fair.

Is it a lie? Is it incitement?

Image: lifenews. com

Extra. Ed Kilgore, a mildly progressive blogger whom I read often, makes a good argument for assigning more blame. But I'm not convinced, because sometimes the shoe is on the other foot.

Rubio scores with rhetoric and (gasp) truth

I'm very impressed with part of Rubio's performance in the recent debate. He took down criticism of a local paper, the debate moderators, and Jeb Bush, and he did it very well and cleanly.

This was perhaps the most talked-about moment in the debate. Rubio was able to turn the tables on Jeb Bush after Bush attacked him. It's worth looking at how Rubio did this.(Video here, transcript here.)

The moderator referred to recent criticism that Rubio is skipping a lot votes in the Senate while he's campaigning. Rubio handled this so deftly that it should be a blueprint for others. He said:

"in 2004, John Kerry ran for president missing close to 60 to 70 percent of his votes. I don't recall the Sun -- in fact, the Sun-Sentinel endorsed him. In 2008, Barack Obama missed 60 or 70 percent of his votes, and the same newspaper endorsed him again."

Then Jeb Bush piled on, saying he was criticizing him as a constituent. This is how Rubio answered him:

"...you're modeling your campaign after John McCain... You know how many votes John McCain missed when he was carrying out that furious comeback that you're now modeling after? ...I don't remember you ever complaining about John McCain's vote record. The only reason why you're doing it now is because we're running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you."

How Rubio turned the tables

First, Rubio didn't deny that he was missing votes, He didn't get defensive about why it was OK for him to be missing votes. Instead, he pointed out the important issues facing the country, implying (correctly) that's where the focus should be, not on a tiny non-issue of a senator missing non-important votes:

"For the first time in 35 years, we have more businesses closing than starting. We have a world that's out of control and has grown dangerous and a president that is weakening our military and making our foreign policy unstable and unreliable in the eyes of our allies."

He also didn't get whiny, with his focus on the unfairness of it all. His focus was on the argument being made, and how weak it was.

Rubio pointed out the same newspaper that complained about him endorsed both Kerry and Obama for president, even though both missed many more votes than Rubio did. The clear implication is that 'missing votes' was a smokescreen, showing the complaint was likely a partisan attack, not a major point of principle. Well done!

When Jeb Bush piled on, Rubio was clearly ready. "Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you" is a very raw truth, and it definitely rings true. Bush is not politically very different from Rubio, so his attacks aren't going to be on major issues, but on minor kinks that he'll need to exaggerate in an attempt to gain an advantage.

Don't sweat the small stuff

The truth is that missing Senate votes isn't generally a huge issue for the few senators who are campaigning. However, it's used as an attack because it shows that the candidate isn't PERFECT. Well, duh, we know that. Candidates get into trouble by pretending they are perfect. Rubio definitely avoided this pitfall. Other candidates would be wise to study and learn that technique.

So what is the blueprint for handling attacks? If it's a nothingburger complaint, as this one was, point out how shallow it is, and how hypocritical your opponent is for making such an attack. Of course, this means that you have to live by that standard. I hope Rubio does, as I would hope that all candidates would.

Note that this strategy doesn't help with the big attacks on big issues. That's so different that it has to be a different post.

 Image: freehqphotos.com

What I have in common with Donald Trump

I have almost nothing in common with Donald Trump. I haven't been divorced, haven't done deals or written books, don't have a terrible combover, and don't traffic in the swallow analysis like this: "I like the evangelicals, and it's really shown in the polls."

So, to stop being coy, I'm like the Donald because neither of us has to stay on a script. Donald can break with the business orthodoxy about immigrants. He can remind other GOP candidates that ripping up the Iran deal isn't the best course (while saying plenty of stupid shit about the deal too). He can talk about tax rates being too low for hedge fund managers. He can slam other Republicans for being foolish warmongers. He can respect someone in the past and slam them unmercifully now.

Liberty . . .

This liberty to say whatever, untethered from party or factional talking points, is absolutely great, and a lot of fun. At least the Donald certainly appears to be having fun.

For me, it's different. I don't want to be a zipperhead or dittohead, and I know it's actually hard work to avoid that. It's hard to question all your received ideas and political positions. For one thing, there are a hell of a lot of political positions, and reexamining them takes time.  You can't do it in a short span. It's going to be a long process, and an ongoing process.

For example, I don't take the typical liberal or moderate view on immigration. It took me a long time to accept what reason told me about immigration--that the high level during the last three decades has had enormous negative consequences. Despite my pride in my immigrant roots and my personal empathy for immigrants, I can't ignore the results I see. This is a bad situation, and we've been following the wrong policy for 25 years.

Liberty, Analysis, Socrates

What motivates me to be different, and to examine all these positions? I want to be realistic, grounded, and right about my opinions. I can only feel confident that I'm right if I've subjected the opinion to a lot of fact-checking and questioning.

That is what I learned nearly four decades ago when I first learned about the Socratic method. It was a powerful lesson--to question honestly, answer honestly, and examine honestly. That's hard work and a very high standard, but it's what I try to do on every important question.

Somehow, I bet the Donald can't say that.

Image: philadelphia-reflections.com

(My first attempt at Photoshop. Argghhh.)

Resilience

An American remembering 9/11:

...I was in an office five blocks from the Capitol on 9/11, and after watching the second plane hit the Trade Center live on television, and seeing the smoke rising on the horizon in the direction of the Pentagon from our windows (right after a colleague called in to say she had seen a plane crash into the Pentagon from her car on I-95), several of us, without words, left our office and walked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and stood on the sidewalk staring at the Capitol, from which pedestrians were streaming. The dome looked so incredibly frail, like an eggshell. 

I also have vivid memories of 9/11. Like the author, I was watching live reporting when the second plane smashed into one of the World Trade Towers.

All that fall, I worried about additional attacks. And they happened--in the form of anthrax sent through the mail. I was on edge for months, turning on CNN immediately after coming home from work or errands.

Gradually, I got over this anxiety and obsessive vigilance. And even my anxiety was a luxury because the country didn't come close to collapsing. I wasn't worried about defending myself, my family, and any survival provisions we had. I watched as debris was cleared, people moved back into homes near the disaster site, the economy teetered but didn't nose-dive.

Still Going

What I saw was the resilience of this country. But it wasn't a large attack. It's unclear what the Islamist planners of the attack thought would happen. Perhaps they thought it would provoke a major war between the West and the Islamic countries. If so, they partially got their wish.

However, neither side is even close to victory or defeat. There is still lots of fighting, but it's confined almost exclusively to Islamic countries, while the Western countries enjoy mostly peace and relative comfort. Perhaps that means the planners of the 9/11 attacks failed, but they play the long game--hoping for success decades or centuries from now. I don't think they will win, but the hope clearly keeps them going.

I'm so happy for my resilience (which didn't face much of a test), and for the resilience of the US. Unfortunately, the people who hate us are also resilient. But perhaps that's an attribute of humanity, so I can't be too upset about it. Better that we're all resilient than none of us.

Then...

Now...

Images: (top) nbsnews..com; (bottom) cheekyspanky

Nothing much to say about that

My interest in political observation has finally dropped. It's been over two weeks since my last post, and I'm not finding much to talk about. Most of the Republican leaders and presidential candidates are shaping up to be knee-jerk idiots who are against anything related to Obama. But that happened 4 years ago too. I watched the show then, figured out the ending before the actors and directors did, laughed at them during their screechy antics, etc. It's 4 years later, and I'm too jaded to do that again.

So I won't be writing about the latest GOP idiocy every week. If there was good news from the GOP, that would be a wonderful topic to write about--such happy news and so unexpected... but that's not going to happen, is it? The talk-radio idiots are fully in charge of the GOP agenda, so there will be no good news for the foreseeable future.

I was mildly interested in what happened in Indiana, but everyone piled onto that one. I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I believe in conscientious objections. On the other hand, the analogy and experience of racial discrimination shows that there's no room for exceptions in the public/business world. Most people seem to see only one side, but I see both, and I'm torn.

However, I also see the legislation as a stunt by the GOP party in Indiana--a little poke in the eye to show who's in power there. It deserved to backfire, and it did. The lesson is not to poke people in the eye. A good lesson, but I already know it.

So, we'll see if anything comes along to pique my interest again. But I doubt it, and I don't even wish for it. I don't see a path to better politics in this country in the next 1.5 years. I just pray it doesn't get worse than the current level of terrible.

Image: evilrightwingbastards.blogspot.com

My bias regarding police

I tend to be biased toward believing a police officer's account in a controversy. However that doesn't mean my bias is rigid--I absolutely know that there are rotten, lying, prejudiced cops who shouldn't be believed. So I make sure to be alert to inconsistencies in a cop's story.

I got to observe my bias at work with the Ferguson shooting. My guesses about what had happened went back and forth, showing the interplay of my biases and the weight of evidence. Here's the account of how my thinking evolved.

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At first, the witness's story seemed logical and consistent. A cop got pissed off at the two young men, provoked an argument, grabbed one of them, and then shot him dead. It's certainly possible.

However, this witness (Dorian Johnson) was soon discredited. Video showed that he and Michael Brown were at a store where they allegedly stole some cigars and Brown pushed and intimidated a clerk. From the video, you can't tell either the cigars were stolen or not, but the pushing and lunging are clear enough.

Also, in the meantime, the cop's background was reported as being clean--no prior issues with excessive force. A clean record isn't what I'd expect from a cop who had a bad enough temper to shoot an innocent person on purpose. But a record can be misleading. Perhaps the cop had always managed to avoid disciplinary measures while still being aggressive. This 'fact' is not as convincing as the video.

With these two new 'facts' to mull over, I revised my initial opinion. It now seemed likely that Brown was very much at fault. He had just committed a crime. The witness's story that the cop grabbed Brown was dubious, and instead it seemed likely that Brown grabbed the cop.

At this point, my usual bias toward believing the cop was supported by evidence, or it seemed that way to me. I was still gathering information and evaluating the testimony of the witnesses who went public. I was waiting for photos showing any wounds the cop (Darren Wilson) might have received. I was also waiting to hear what the autopsy showed. This evidence took a long time to arrive and is still subject to dispute. The conclusions of the county medical examiner don't completely match the conclusion of the medical examiner hired by Brown's family.

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So did the 'facts' depart from what I expected at all? Yes, and that's where I learned something new. The people of Ferguson had a particular reason to be angry. They were being plagued with punitive fines and enforcement aimed at extracting as much money as possible (more details here).

Of course, the burden of excessive fines doesn't excuse theft or assaulting an officer, but it explains some of the response. Nonetheless, most of the response is due to bigger issues such as the history of police aggression against minorities and cultural clashes between law enforcement and a 'no-snitching' ethos in black communities. I wish there was a giant reset button we could push that would erase the historical animosity and let people start fresh. But there isn't, so we are doomed to reinforce our biases unless we actively work against them.

Image: politic365.com

Update 12/8/14. I recant what I said about the 'giant reset button.' That disrespects the legitimate and deeply-felt grievances minorities have. There is no wiping the slate clean. Instead, there should be amends, trust-building, and reconciliation.

Why don't we have a travel ban?

The Ebola issue is much more political than it should be. Of course, many politicians can't restrain themselves from engaging in bashing their targets over a disease that's as deadly as Ebola. In the 1980's, the politically-infected arguments raged about AIDS, and we haven't had a disease with this much potential since then. However, the politics around AIDS perhaps should have been a lesson to prevent politics from ruling the discussion. But we're Americans, so we inject politics into everything.

Even if you don't think you personally are bringing politics into your viewpoint on Ebola, you probably are. To see how the politics play out, just ask yourself why we don't have a travel ban. Your answer is likely to fall into one of two categories, both of which are heavily influenced by politics.

There must be a good reason

I didn't ask myself about the lack of a travel ban for a while. I'm not sure why, but my left-of-center tendencies probably had something to do with it. I figured that the administration had a good reason for not banning travel from the epidemic areas. I didn't believe that cover stories that it was due to vital trade ties, or that commercial flights were necessary for our humanitarian efforts. I figured that there was a reason that the administration didn't feel comfortable talking about. Perhaps they were worried about human smuggling taking over if there were no flights. (That was my top theory.)

However, my support was based on faith or trust that there was a good reason. Faith and trust--not good scientific reasons.

So why don't we have a travel ban? Maybe it's the smuggling worry. Maybe we have a secret agreement with most European countries that we won't cut off flights. That way the affected countries have contact and a safety valve, but no country with good western medicine ends up with a disproportionate number of Ebola cases (that's another theory, in case you didn't notice).

This is still speculation, faith, and trust. If we based our policy simply on reducing our chances of an Ebola epidemic to the lowest possible level, we would have a travel ban. We would also not have allowed the American workers with Ebola to return and be treated in American hospitals.

So this administration is willing to take some risks. The science does show that the risks are quite low, and that's been born out in the US. The only known cases of transmission in the US occurred between a deathly ill patient (with copious diarrhea and vomiting) and his nurses. No one in his family became ill.

But the low chance of an outbreak here isn't the declared reason for a lack of a travel ban. We're still left wondering and coming up with our own ideas for the lack of a travel ban.

There must be a nefarious reason

If you don't trust the president and his administration, what do you make of the lack of a travel ban? I've read a bunch of theories on that:

• The administration doesn't want to be politically incorrect, so it won't cut off or stigmatize part of Africa.
• The administration supports open borders in every way, even if it lets Ebola into the country.
• Obama hates America and wants an Ebola epidemic here.
• Obama puts the good of other countries above the good of the US.
• This is payback for slavery.
• This is a good way to reduce overpopulation all over the Earth.

By not being clear in its reasons, the Obama administration has opened the door to a lot of speculation. That speculation is either supportive and antagonistic, and all of it is tinged with politics. If you thought your opinion was based solely on science, I hope this post showed you otherwise.

Image: microbiologyworld.com

Extras. Christie and Cuomo teamed up to show that they are post-political and would institute a quarantine together. It fell apart in a couple days because it was based on political gamesmanship. Ebola politics in Louisiana, a state that isn't likely to be a locus of Ebola issues. The media steps up to help Obama again--travel bans don't work. See, there must be a good reason.

Try this experiment with Google

I was thinking about our country after looking at a photo of a scene in Ferguson, Missouri, which was the site of a police shooting and subsequent protests for several weeks (and also some rioting and looting), It seems that Ferguson is pretty peaceful again.

The photograph was of a family walking with bags from the Family Dollar store, a store specializing in inexpensive merchandise.

Image: wpxi.com

I really liked this photo. To me, it looks like the family bought themselves some inexpensive goods, maybe including a few treats. These are regular, unpretentious folks. I like that we have diversity in this country--the rich, the middle class, the lower middle class, the working poor, the non-working poor. We have them all, and I'm not at all ashamed of that.

In that train of thought, I decided to find images of "poor people in Sweden." It's a very disappointing search. There are pictures of Swedish aid projects in climates where palm trees thrive. Are there any pictures of poor Swedes? No.

Not even Bloomberg Businessweek could find a picture. Here is their take on the gulf between rich and poor in Sweden:

Image: businessweek.com

The "poor" house on the left is a historic example of a house from over a century ago. I did find a few articles: about riots that involved the poor and immigrants, begging, and Roma shacks being demolished. Among native Swedes, poverty is gone, I guess.

I doubt that Sweden is a good exemplar that the US could follow, however. It's a much smaller country, and not the melting pot we are. We are who we are, a very mixed bunch. I'm ok with that.

Ayn Rand is Nietzsche

Nietzsche is commonly credited with offering an alternative morality, where the supermen didn't have to follow the same rules as the sheep the rest of mankind. I haven't read much Nietzsche, so this may be a misrepresentation, but let's pretend it's accurate.

Ayn Rand thought that the bureaucrats and leeches were holding back the greatness of society. This is somewhat a tenet of libertarianism, that we all need to be free to soar as high as possible, free from the regulations that would tether us to mediocrity. Those tethers include anything beyond minimal taxes, gun restrictions, licensing for professions, FDA drug testing, regulations, and paperwork showing compliance with vast numbers of government rules, etc. They also include the social safety net. I'm going to focus on the safety net.

Some people need the social safety net. That's why we have it. Before governments got into that business, there were churches and charities that tried to handle the load but were often overwhelmed. I assume charities were overwhelmed. Perhaps they weren't and it was just a trick some liberal busybodies dreamed up in order to make jobs for themselves. But I bet charities were frequently overwhelmed.

So we've had and needed a social safety net. Yet Ayn Rand was against that net. I can understand if she thinks it's better never to use the safety net, but why should it not even exist? It exists because people have needed it in the past, some need it now, and other will need it in the future. But other people's needs are unimportant to the Ayn Rand archetype. The Ayn Rand hero will never be that needy person. The superman doesn't need the safety net, and the world should be for the supermen, not for the sheep. So, no safety nets for you sheep either.

In the Ayn Rand view, it's too bad that the sheep of Europe even pushed for these safety nets starting back in the 1800's. The sheep of America followed. That's a problem, having these sheep make decisions about what government is going to do. They make sheep-like decisions. The sheep become more sheep-like and dependent, and the supermen are weighed down. Government should be limited so the sheep can't decide what's to be done. [By the way, doesn't this sound suspiciously feudal? The nobility should make the decisions, and the peasants should shut up and be good mules.]

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I hope I've shown a strong similarity between the philosophy of Ayn Rand and Neitzsche. Perhaps I'm overreaching here, but I don't think so. I wondered for a long time why people are so adamantly against Social Security, a program that has such broad appeal. Why isn't it good enough for anti-SS folks that large numbers of people want the program? Isn't that democracy?

No, democracy isn't a good enough reason. First and foremost, the country should be as free as possible. That's what libertarians strive for. Nothing, not the wishes of the majority for a social safety net, should overrule the primary guiding principle of the country.

On one hand I can see the logic in this. On the other hand, in practice the people of this country (as in "we, the people") took the country in the direction it has gone. This country wasn't invaded and hijacked by Russians who changed our government by fiat. WE changed it. And there was a logic to the changes that we made.

So the libertarians aren't the only ones who have a logical, reasonable view of how our government should work. They have lots of competition, and they've been losing. We, the People, don't want the Ayn Rand or Nietzsche philosophy. The elections tell us that.

 Image: aplaceformom.com

Painful realization: Honesty is less important

My  review of the Benghazi incident spurred me to reevaluate the role of lies in a political campaign. I've rather unhappily discovered how much you may have to lie, not just to win, but to deny victory to a scarier opponent.

It's strange to be thinking this way because I really believe that most Americans see through the lies. So if the lies are transparent, why do you need to make them in the first place? On the other hand, I don't see more honest candidates doing very well. Ron Paul is probably the most honest candidate I've seen, and lots of Republicans can't stand him because of it. (Note that even Honest Ron doesn't mind using obscure election rules to grab higher numbers of delegates than his share of the vote.)

So if too much honesty is a liability, how much is 'just right?'

What the hell is going on here? That question about honesty is disgusting, and so antithetical to what ethical people.usually have to consider. Have I finally converted from believing in honesty to putting my lot in with realpolitik? God I hope not.

But maybe I have. I expect candidates to lie and pander most of the time. My pride is in being able to see the lies, read between the lies, and find out what they are hiding. I think I'm good at lie detection, and all those lies keep me busy and proud of my handiwork. I've thought politicians were hacks for not lying well and revealing what they actually thought.

Maybe I'm part of the problem. However, I can't pretend what isn't true, and the truth is that there are no honest politicians. I can't change that fact, so I have to deal with it. And if honesty isn't going to be the yardstick, what is?

Maybe these: Good judgment, the ability to get important things done, effectiveness, avoiding the big mistakes.

This is what I want most in elected officials. And looking at this list, I think it's the same list I've used for years. I've been making pragmatic choices, picking who's going to do the best out of the available options.

It's not that I've changed and gotten too jaded. It's just that I'm more aware of how politics works, and particularly the unavoidable underbelly of lies. Well, that's a relief. Or is it?

If lies aren't so bad, what place does honesty have in politics? Here are some of my initial ideas: Be honest with yourself. Don't settle for a convenient story just because it supports the party you prefer. Be honest in your discussions. When you're not a politician who has to get elected, you don't have the excuse to lie that they do, so stay away from the talking points and take a hard look at reality.

And everyone, especially politicians, should remember that lies get found out and the truth usually emerges eventually. If the truth is going to come out, why bother with the lie? Take your lumps early, admit the mistake, learn the lesson, and move on.

This would have saved a lot of the trouble with the lingering Benghazi issue. It's not too late to find a way to acknowledge that the Benghazi story wasn't the truth and to reveal all the truth that isn't a security problem. Are you listening, Hillary?

Yeah, sure, I believe that.

Image: israeliidf.wordpress.com

Tsunami of memories: Anita Hill

Just as in Remembrance of Things Past, memories sometimes wash over me with their power undiminished by time. Today, it was because of this article about Anita Hill.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The highest court needed a black justice because the only black justice, Thurgood Marshall, had just retired.

Thomas had been groomed for the Supreme Court by the Republicans. There are few blacks among the Republicans, so it wasn't hard for a black Republican to rise. Witness Allen West, Herman Cain, and Dr. Ben Carson in the past few years. Clarence Thomas wasn't a great lawyer or scholar, but that holds true for all the justices right now. I don't know a major accomplishment of any of them.

What fills my memories was the drama of the hearings for Thomas's nomination. Nominations are pretty dull affairs. There is always effusive praise from one side and attempts at gotcha questions from the other. I'm pretty sure Thomas's hearing was like that, but with the added indignation from the liberals that the GOP had a black man (or Uncle Tom) who talked the same trickle-down, traditional respect-for-authority, conservative line that all the old white men did. However, since he was black, the GOP could pretend that they were a broader party than they were. Indignant isn't quite the word for the liberal response--'ape shit' is more apt.

The liberals weren't doing a good job of derailing the nomination, something that they had succeeded in doing in 1987 with the nomination of Robert Bork, a seriously intelligent and detestable person. It looked as though Thomas, this groomed slap-in-the-face at blacks (or was it liberals?), was going to win confirmation.

Abrupt Shift

Then a scoop erupted in the press. A former associate of Thomas had been interviewed by the FBI about allegations that Thomas has harassed female employees. Additional hearings were scheduled. Anita Hill testified calmly on a Friday. She told about Thomas, in the workplace, discussing scenes from porno movies he'd seen the previous weekend. There was also the joke he made about a pubic hair on his can of coke.

What Anita Hill said had the ring of truth to me. But this is so subjective. To conservatives, she was a "spurned woman" trumped up by radical pro-choice feminists trying to derail the appointment of a solid, fair man.

I watched her testimony, and I also watched Thomas's testimony in that rare Saturday session. Thomas was full of fire and righteous indignation, and he was very believable. He denounced the charges as a desperate and craven attempt to besmirch a honest man, all for venal political reasons. I would have believed it, and many people did, including some co-workers. (Aside: People are generally good as sorting out the weaselly liars, but we aren't so good at identifying the full-throated ones.)

However, the supporting witnesses for Hill were quite strong, recalling how she told them at the time what was happening. Purely on evidence, Hill's story was stronger. But evidence didn't win over political considerations, and Thomas was confirmed.

The Personal Overlaps the Political

What I remember most was Anita Hill telling a true story that wasn't generally heard before. Her boss degraded her in sexual ways, but he got away with it because it was only words. Some commentators castigated her as a liar, saying that no woman would put up with that treatment.

But I knew otherwise. I knew from personal experience that until sexual harassment became a well-known issue, women didn't know what to do when they were harassed. I certainly didn't know what to do when a senior engineer in his 50's took the liberty of putting his arm around my back as we discussed engineering matters, and he kept it there. On one hand, it might have looked like innocuous touch, but it definitely was unwelcome and uncomfortable on my end.

Luckily, his liberties never progressed. I recall vividly how they ended. I ran into him at the bank, and he put his arm around me again. I thought "I may have to put up with this at work, but there's no way in hell I'm putting up with it outside of work." So I jammed my elbow hard into his side. He never touched me again. He avoided eye contact after that too.

I was a twenty-something woman engineer, one of only two in that factory, and there were no harassment reporting programs back then. I wasn't a trail-blazer, and I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing for a while, then I fought back, then it was over, and I never thought "this is a general problem bigger than me." Thank God other people did see the bigger problem and did work to counter it. This was pure progress to a better world. I'll argue with anyone who says otherwise.

Both swore to tell the truth

Image: salon.com

Deconstructing claims about the mortgage crisis

Yet again I'm fighting with GOP partisans about what caused the mortgage crisis. The GOP partisans will say something like this: [click through to see comments]

"The crash was a direct result of Democrat policies forcing/allowing very risky lending. Get your history correct."

I won't repeat their entire narrative of how Dems forced banks to make risky loans to minorities, which were funneled through Fannie and Freddie, put the government on the hook, and all that bad paper caused the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequently the long recession.

Here's what I think happened, with me trying to be as fair as possible and without evidence to back each individual piece.

1. CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) forced banks to end their discriminatory redlining practices. This was a good thing. Banks had to loosen some of their lending standards. Perhaps there were quotas, and if so, I don't know if the quotas were fair or not. 
2. The results of CRA were good, so the programs were expanded, probably too much.
3. The managers of Fannie and Freddie wanted to collect higher salaries more in line with other majors bankers, so they lobbied for changes to allow them to become publicly traded companies. 
4. Somewhere along the way, Fannie and Freddie became big contributors to Democratic campaigns. That made it politically expedient for Dems to protect them and the GOP to attack them.
5. Other banks, such as the Wall Street firms, saw the kind of money Fannie and Freddie were earning, and wanted a big piece of it. They lowered their lending standards and flocked into the subprime market. (This bit is ignored by the GOP. See below.)
6. The GOP raised alarms about mortgage lending in 2003-2005, focusing exclusively on Fannie and Freddie, and ignoring the same or worse practices of the big banks. The Dems circled the wagons and defended Fannie and Freddie. 

That pretty much sums up the reason behind the GOP narrative about CRA, Fannie, Freddie, and the Dems causing the financial crisis.

What the narrative leaves out other players who had a much larger role in the financial crisis. The big banks envied the profits that Fannie and Freddie were raking in due to their unfair advantage in borrowing. The big banks went after the highest profit area, which was subprime lending, and they inflated number of mortgages a great deal. But all this occurred within a decades-long housing boom, a boom in mortgages, a boom in home equity lending, and a housing price bubble. I frankly don't know how much of the crisis was due to poor lending standards and how much was due to the housing bubble, or whether anyone can unscramble those pieces. However, it clearly wasn't all due to Fannie and Freddie.

Yet, when you read some explanations (like this), it seems that it was all Fannie/Freddie's fault:

"Moral hazard was everywhere and endemic. The biggest source was in the GSEs [Fannie and Freddie]. The GSEs were entirely moral hazard."

I have my own warnings: Beware of explanations that don't discuss the roles of private banks. Beware of explanations that don't have graphs. Graphs invariably show that private banks were huge players in the subprime mortgage business.

Image: ritholz.com

Beware narratives that say Fannie and Freddie weren't part of the problem. If that were true, why did they need almost $187 billion in bailout money?

Remember that the GOP weren't the thwarted would-be heroes. They went after Fannie and Freddie for political reasons, while using lending concerns as the pretext. This becomes clear when you realize that the GOP warnings completely ignored the even larger problems brewing at the big banks. The Dems, likewise, defended Fannie and Freddie for partisan political reasons. The alarms that should have been heard and heeded were smothered by politics. 

What I haven't worked out yet is why a crisis in bad housing securities became a more generalized financial crisis. There are plenty of explanations I could give off the top of my head, but I'm not sure they're right. I also don't know the role of other financial inputs such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) or credit default swaps. Understanding that may be beyond my capabilities. Frankly, I don't even know where to start to research on those aspects of the financial crisis. But I've researched enough to clearly declare bullshit on some of the claims, and back it up with solid data. Solid data - this is a good thing.

Summary of links:

• Biased blame on Fannie/Freddie with no graphs. It was so balanced it was reposted by the American Enterprise Institute think tank. (In case you missed it, that was sarcasm.)
• Lots of graphs, but less mention of Fannie/Freddie. Less biased, but still some, probably.
• Another graph showing involvement of Fannie/Freddie and asking questions about their role.
• My previous posts on this topic here and here.
• Testimony before a committee with a biased name (see below). However, this introductory paragraph floored me:

"Government housing policy failed homeowners and taxpayers and it is important to understand why. The GSEs contributed to the meltdown. The direct cause of the crisis was the proliferation of poorly underwritten and risky mortgage products. The majority of these products, and the most risky products, were funded through private label securitization." [emphasis added]

Finally, putting the conclusion before the research and evidence, presented to you by the House Republicans. You've got to love the balls it takes to do this:

Update 3/19/18. Of course partisan hacks still pretend the mortgage crisis was all due to those miserable Dems. Here's a reminder of who wasn't the boogeyman. Oh God, I wish the liars would stop.

One thing I learned: a case against ACA

I'm not as open to different ideas as I would like to be. It seems to me that most people who are firmly against ACA fell into one of more of these categories:

• Libertarians who don't want federal government in any kind of social program. (I give them a pass for deeply held, coherent beliefs that I happen to disagree with.)
• GOP partisans who hate all Democratic programs regardless of their strong points.
• People who think the country is made up of makers and takers, and the takers don't deserve access to health insurance, or probably healthcare either.
• Fools/zipperheads who think that the GOP proposals would have solved the problems well enough at a much lower cost.

I found another category, or maybe I just started hearing the argument: fiscal conservatives who don't trust the finances of the program.

"Obamacare is basically just another entitlement. It has no solid foundation to pay for it despite all the rhetoric. I'm not 100% opposed to entitlements per se, but we do a pizz poor job of administering them - so in my view we don't need another one." -- National Review commenter

This is a strong argument. If I take the argument sentence by sentence, it holds up quite well:

• Another entitlement--check. It's a federally-guaranteed and financed large-scale program.
• No solid foundation to pay for it--a strong possibility. The dedicated revenue streams may not be enough.
• Pizz poor job of administering them--check. The track record for federal programs include no cost containment in Medicare and Medicaid, welfare that grew far too large, etc.

I support universal health coverage for a variety of reasons, but I'm also aware that it could be a failure. I want to try it anyhow for the many benefits, which I already have as a Massachusetts resident. My empathy for people in need outweighs my worries. But for many people, the scale falls the other way. 

They have good reasons for their opinions, perhaps stronger than mine, yet I still don't agree. It's not that I'm giving in to illogical motives. It's because of the mystery of how some values take precedence over others.

Image: nationalmemo.com

GOP stands up to the Tea Party Part 2

So many thoughts. Not so many complete sentences.

GOP standing up to Tea Party. Orrin Hatch blasts Heritage. Corporate backers stick with Boehner, toy with the idea of backing establishment Republicans against Tea Partyers.

Tea Party not backing down. RedState doesn't want a house divided; it wants a house purged.

Tea Party is still behind its belief that Obamacare can be stopped/defunded/gutted. They pretend that this was the plan all along, to fight tooth and nail, close down government, do everything they can. But that's a story that only started over the summer.

In this article, RedState blames the GOP for not following through on defund promises, but all the early articles it refers to talk about broad fiscal goals, not Obamacare. I checked the RedState archives: Ben Carson, black neurologist hero of the Tea Party, had lots of complaints about Obama, not just Obamacare. In a February article, the focus was on governors refusing to set up exchanges. Search for "defund," "repeal," and "delay" in articles from that time and you'll see that it wasn't part of the vocabulary then.

Rush Limbaugh, another big voice (and big ego) for the Tea Party, isn't backing down either. He wants Ted Cruz and Mike Lee times 5 or 10 or 45 in the Senate. Per the Washington Times, the Tea Party is "poised for a major victory in the larger Obamacare War." Details absent, though.

Image: usnews.com

Extras. History of the shutdown per Politico. How the House voted on the measure to end the shutdown and raise the debt limit. How the Senate voted. Currently the Senate has about 10 senators with similar strategies to Ted Cruz/Mike Lee. After the 2014 election, who knows.

So many great images to choose from. Google image search: GOP stands up to tea party cartoon.

Another RedState article where they look at evidence but still somehow manage to draw the wrong conclusion--that is, the conclusion they want to draw.

Short: Debt Default 101 ... before it's moot

The talking point on the right is that US doesn't have to default on its bonds, or SS payments, or anything that could bring a shitstorm down on the GOP.

Is this true? How would we know, especially those of us who aren't zipperheads waiting for conservative commentators to tell us what to say?

I did what I always do, some online research. Here's a history of US federal government defaults. There was a brief, accidental default in 1979. The one before that was in 1934, when the US went to a fractional gold standard. These defaults tell us nothing about what would happen in the 21st century if the US was to default.

What does a non-zipperhead business reporter think will happen if we default? It depends how long the default lasts, but it's not good and gets worse from there.

Finally, what about prioritizing US government payments? No can do. No legal framework and no practical framework.

I hope you aren't too tired for one last question. Why aren't the Republicans asking these questions instead of speculating out their asses?

Default party confetti!!!! Bonds, of course

Image: shredinstead.com

Extra. Here's the follow-up post with more details on why prioritizing payments isn't a workable idea.

Short: Why I love Plain Blog

The matchlight flares up blindingly.

Suddenly I see so clearly why I like (love?) the Plain Blog about Politics. Here it is:

• It's based on data. In particular, the author (a PhD and professor) has a deep knowledge of US political history, and he takes a data-driven approach. 

This is a refreshing difference from the mostly ideological approach that political writers take.  Here's the author, Jonathan Bernstein, destroying the idea that a loss on the Syria vote will destroy the Obama presidency:

...there's one permutation that absolutely, no question about it, would destroy the rest of Barack Obama's presidency is: a disastrous war. Ask Lyndon Johnson or George W. Bush. Or Harry Truman...   

None of the other permutations [including losing a Syria vote] are anywhere close to that kind of threat to the Obama presidency. Presidents lose key votes which are then mostly forgotten all the time. They pursue policies which poll badly, but are then mostly forgotten, all the time. There are important things to say about all of that, because "mostly" isn't completely. But the first thing to get right when considering the effects of Syria policy on the rest of the Obama presidency is that the scale of a Vietnam or an Iraq (or a Korea, for that matter) overwhelms everything else we might talk about.

However, it wasn't reading the blog that brought on this epiphany. I was pursuing an argument on another blog where I'm trying to get a blogger to alter his view of Obama's fiscal program. How am I trying to do this? With data. 

Do your views conform with the data, or do you have to ignore the data (ignore facts) to maintain your political position? Everyone should be asking themselves that ALL THE TIME. Sadly, that isn't what happens.

The future of the Senate

I was going to write about how the Dems were doomed when it came to holding the Senate (not for the first time either). It stands to reason that with so many rural and southern conservative states, the Dems can't hold the Senate much longer.

Wrong. I checked out my hypothesis that there are more conservative states than liberal states, but that's not true. According to the 2012 presidential election returns, Obama won 26 states, and Romney won 24.

Image: freedomslighthouse.net

Of course, about a dozen of these are swing states. Many more are not so liberal that they won't elect a Republican senator. But it's not the slam-dunk for the GOP that I initially thought.

The GOP should have been able to flip the Senate, but they've picked some terrible candidates (roll call: Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Christine O'Donnell). The GOP establishment keeps hoping, but the GOP base keeps undermining them. It'll interesting to watch what happens in 2014 because the Dems are still vulnerable.

The GOP desperately needs to turn the Senate. Their power in the House looks impregnable (thanks to their control of a majority of state governments and the tradition of gerrymandering), but it hasn't done them much good. The Senate routinely ignores the highly partisan bills arriving from the House, making the House look stupid and the Senate wise.

It's questionable whether the GOP can turn the Senate while they behave as they do in the House. There is no better incentive for voters to choose a Dem senate candidate than the current crop of House Republicans.

If the GOP were to gain the Senate, what would they do with it? If they became as extreme as the House, they would not keep the Senate long. Fed-up senators have already been quitting on a regular basis. On the other hand, the GOP have passed a lot of their agenda in a short time when they had the chance, as in 2001. That won't happen after 2014 with a Dem still in the White House. It's questionable what they could do with the Senate, except hope to build momentum for a complete sweep in 2016.

In the meantime, the GOP has got to be looking over its shoulder as some states are turning blue, or bluish. Virginia is one of the first, but Georgia and Arizona are getting ripe.

It seems to me that there's no strategy for the GOP to gain a lot of power, between their base, their extremists in the House, their frequently execrable candidates, and looming demographics. But I did think of one thing that could help them! If they just gave the House back to Nancy Pelosi...

Image: suitablyflip.blogs.com

Sigh--I voted for the hack

Yesterday was the special election to fill the senate seat left vacant when John Kerry became Secretary of State. I voted for the hackish Democrat, Edward Markey, who is too old and too doctrinaire liberal. How does it get to this point?

First, too few Democrats ran for this plum seat. This is a change from 2009, when lots of Dems ran for the seat that the Republican Scott Brown ultimately won. Most of them looked like hacks--very typical lock-step liberals. Michael Capuano seemed different. He proudly supported some of the compromises he made--and I love a good pragmatist. However, it seems that Capuano didn't even want to run this time, and cleared the way for his fellow (though lesser) House colleague, Markey.

Markey, as I said above, is a liberal hack, but a reliable one. I wanted to like his opponent, Steven Lynch, but the guy, also a House member, doesn't know what he's doing. During one debate, Lynch accused Markey of "knowing policy, but not people" [paraphrase, exact quote not located]. Horrors-- Markey voted against some verbal declaration on yada yada, but that's terrible. In Lynch's mind, it's worse than voting against the bank bailout that salvaged the economy, as Lynch had done.

I generally want to vote for the more moderate candidate, but that doesn't extend to stupid.

It's a bit harder for me to vote for a Republican right now. We need them to prevent the Dems from going whole hog, but they'd do a lot of damage if they achieved the major share of power in federal government. They might send shocks into the fragile recovery with large budget cuts, they'd do away with the best chance for the uninsured to get medical coverage, they'd enact all kinds of harmful social measures about marriage and abortion...

I'll only vote for a Republican who'll vote against these bad GOP ideas. Gomez claims to be "a new kind of Republican" but he's not for healthcare for everyone. He wants states to figure it out on their own. What a fucking lame excuse. He'll flush away the only decent health plan to pass in the past 30 years on that basis, not offering an alternative, and seemingly not caring about the problem enough to dig into it. There's no way I'll support another Senate vote to repeal Obamacare without a decent replacement in the works.

So I'm stuck with the hack Markey.

Markey, barely changed from 1976

Image: wikipedia.org + Paint

Against dogmatism

I'm not a religious person, but I'm quite familiar with religion.  I grew up with fairly devout parents, several siblings are devout, and my sweetie enthusiastically goes to church nearly every Sunday and holy day. As I've said before, I greatly respect religion.

That said, religion is a horrible basis for politics. This suddenly strikes me as strange. Why is religion a good basis for religion, but a bad basis for politics? Such a simple question, but perhaps there's a lot to explore there.

What got me thinking about this is Andrew Sullivan's post about another blogger at National Review insulting his thought process. I don't want to comment on blogger squabbles, which are endless and tacky in their inbreeding, but it did remind me how important one idea is to me: empiricism.

I fell in love with philosophy in college, and have used critical thinking forever afterward. I also studied physics and psychology, with a sprinkling of art history and geology and other assorted bits. It was a wonderful example of a wide-ranging liberal education. Of all these fields, the one with the strongest basis was the philosophy of pragmatism.

Pragmatism has a lot of similarities to science. It calls for empirical observation, reflection, and testing. It is also explicit about some processes that are implicit in science: follow-through to see the results, iterations on promising theories to refine them, trying out alternative approaches. What makes pragmatism work is what makes science work so well: it is based on honest, unbiased, and careful observation. You don't jump to a conclusion, you wait for enough evidence. If only politicians of all stripes would do that.

"I wrote my dissertation on the primacy of practical wisdom in human conduct - in contradistinction to ideology... Dish readers can judge for themselves whether this blog is about imposing 'theoretical, theological, and ideological certainties' or whether it is about taking positions but always subjecting them to scrutiny, re-evaluation, re-thinking." -- Andrew Sullivan

 Graphic: chemheritage.org